It’s called the "backfire phenomenon:" Even when you give correct information, people still believe incorrect facts, sometimes even more strongly.

It is known as the backfire phenomenon: misinformed people who are given correct information not only reject that information, but end up believing the wrong information even more strongly.

Political scientists Jason Reifler and Brendan Nyhan began looking at the “backfire” phenomenon because both were interested in improving political debate.

The “backfire” phenomenon can be seen in everything from different views on a call in a hockey game to the so-called weapons of mass destruction that were alleged to be in Iraq prior to the 2003 U.S. invasion, said Reifler, an assistant professor of political science at Georgia State University.

“We wanted to address ways in which citizens could essentially agree on what the basic facts in a political debate are,” he said. “And then we can disagree on the policy solution.”

In a recent study published in the journal Political Science, the pair looked at ways to “help correct people when they believe things about the world that aren’t true.”

The political scientists worked with a group of 150 psychology students. The students were given a newspaper article from the 2004 presidential campaign

about President George Bush and his position on why the U.S. was going to war with Iraq. In it, he was quoted as saying there was a real risk that Sadam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

Half of the students who read the article were also given a correction: an additional paragraph saying that, according to the Duelfer Report, while Iraq had aspirations to reconstitute its weapons of mass destruction program, it did not have any weapons of mass destruction during the U.S. invasion in 2003.

The other half did not receive that information.

Here’s what they found: Those who got the correction and identified themselves as liberals now believed there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Those who got the correction and identified themselves as conservatives were much more likely to say that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

In fact, said Reifler, those receiving the correction moved even more vehemently in the wrong direction.

Simply put, the correction backfired.

“This is a behaviour that is widespread,” said Reifler, “and it isn’t limited to political conservatives.”

Part of this response can be attributed to a common psychological phenomenon known as motivated reasoning.

“One of the things. . . when people encounter discordant information is to find a way to deal with that information in a way that doesn’t threaten what they already know or believe,” Reifler explained. .

The pair is now studying the reaction of participants to the U.S. healthcare bill and the debate last summer that focused around “death panels,” which conservative ideologues suggested would mean mandatory meetings in which the elderly or sick would be counselled to accept euthanasia because they had become a drain on society.

Anyone who read the legislation, Reifler said, would have seen that no such clause existed.

“What the legislation did say was Medicare would pay for consultations if people wanted to meet with somebody to discuss issues related to end of life, like a living will,” he said. “The government insurance plan for seniors would have to pay for that.”

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